ABSTRACT
Mobilities and Materialities by Rachel Brooks and Johanna Waters signals the arrival of a major conceptual shift in the study and research of education mobilities. Through first-hand research and a careful reading of the social science literature, they offer a coherent, highly readable Rich descriptions of buildings and artefacts are accompanied by careful analyses of their (un)anticipated effects on teaching and learning practices, the authors drawing out entanglements, lively paradoxes and connective interdependences. The ethnically unbalanced demographic profile of inner city, selective state schools in Sydney has been the focus of recent media attention with newspapers reporting that more than 90 per cent of the student population identifies as being from a non-English speaking background. Following Vanessa Fong's decade-long research into the institutional forms of transnational education (TNE) in Asia, Phan (2017) makes the provocative claim that TNE delivers 'transformative mediocrity', an argument which has been reinforced by other studies of TNE programmes.
